Wrote a history of painting in
Bologna through biographies of Bolognese artists in 1678. Malvasia was born to an aristocratic Bolognese family. He
gained early fame for his poetry and dabbled in painting as an aristocratic pursuit
under Giacinto Campana (b. 1600) and Giacomo Cavedone and the literary academy
dei Gelati. After graduating with a law degree, Malvasia went to Rome in
1639 where he further participated in the literary academies (degli Umoristi and
dei
Fantastici) and meeting Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Ginetti, Cardinal
Bernardino Spada (1594-1661) and the artist Alessandro Algardi (1598-1654). From 1647 onward he lectured in Law at
the university in Bologna. After publication of an essay related the
theological aspects of a painting, Lettera a Monsignor
Albergati, 1652, and obtaining a theology degree in 1653, he was appointed a canon in
Bologna Cathedral in 1662. Malvasia's appointment took him to the capitols
of the Italian states and contacts with the cultural administrators of the land,
including Marco Boschini and Nicolas Régnier, and Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (whom he advised on
his
collections) and, in1665, Pierre Cureau de la Chambre, who gained him entré
into the French court of Louis XIV and the Académie Royale. During this period,
Malvasia collected and researched the artistic life of his native Bologna.
This resulted in the 1678 Felsina pittrice, Malvasia's narrative art
history of painting in
Bologna. Organized through biographies of Bolognese artists, it is the
core primary document on Bolognese artists of the Baroque.

Conscious of lives-of-artists books such as the 1550 work of
Giorgio Vasari (q.v.) and Giovanni Baglione (q.v.), Malvasia's attempts to place
Bolognese art at the fore, attracting Florentine supremacy and highlighting
Bolognese innovation. He divided
his book into four sections, beginning with the primitives, then Francesco Francia,
then the Carracci and, ending with the great baroque artists of Malvasia’s
generation, Guido Reni, Domenichino, Francesco Albani
and Guercino. In 1686 he published Le pitture di Bologna, a "gallery guide" for
the artists about whom he had spoken in the Felsina. The guide was
tremendously popular and was reprinted seven times in the next hundred years. In
1694, his final art commentary, Il Claustro di S
Michele in Bosco di Bologna, on the Caracci school artists, appeared. Malvasia's
strong argument for Bologna caused controversy. Filippo Baldinucci (q.v.)
attacked Malvasia's stance in an Apologia of his Notizie di professori del disegno,
as well as the Venetian Marco Boschini (1613-1678), and in 1703, Vincenzo Vittoria (1650–1712) in his
Osservazioni sopra il libro della Felsina Pittrice per difesa di
Raffaello. Malvasia’s methodology
concentrated on documents without forcing a single conclusion, as much of the
other art historical encomia had previously done. Giovanni Bellori (q.v.), who, in his
Vite,
used historical material to support his classicist position, whereas Malvasia’s
Felsina Pittrice is more empirical and allows a greater freedom of aesthetic
viewpoints. Malvasia’s work suffered much in the centuries since its
publication. Parts of his work were attacked as forgeries, others decried
his idea of eclecticism for the Carracci. Since the 1980s, Malvasia's work has
undergone a period of reassessment and the value of his original ideas and
scholarship once again valued. Felsina Pittrice remains one of the core
primary texts of the Bolognese Baroque.

Home Country: Italy

Sources: Enggass, Catherine, and Enggass, Robert. "Introduction." The
Life of Guido Reni. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1980; Perini, Giovanna. Dictionary of Art; Perini, Giovanna
"Central Issues and Peripheral Debates in Seventeenth-century Art Literature."
World Art: Themes of Unity in Adversity. Acts of the XXVI International
Congress of the History of Art: Washington, DC, 1986, pp. 139–43; Mahon,
Denis. Studies in Seicento Art and Theory. London: 1947; Dempsey,
Charles. "Malvasia and the Problem of the Early Raphael and Bologna." Studies
in the History of Art 17 (1986): 57–70